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Make a speakers' corner at Forbes lot
Convert the parking lot at Fourth and Grant into a speakers’ corner :Original article by Al Hoff, City Paper, in January 2006 Tired of site-specific protesting with lousy audience potential? Of hollering your opinion over the grind of a Port Authority bus pulling away? Of being hassled by The Man -- when you’re trying to take it to The Man? What Pittsburgh needs is a dedicated speakers’ corner, such as London has in Hyde Park: a gathering place where one is guaranteed the right to address the public. And what better place than the parking lot on the corner of Fourth and Grant avenues, Downtown? The site isn’t just easily accessible and centrally located, but strategically positioned directly across the street from the City-County Building, the ostensible center of local power. That corner is currently the province of a spectacularly priced parking lot ($7 for 30 minutes; $22 for those lingering more than 90 minutes). Admittedly, wresting such a profitable enterprise from a private entity is a huge stumbling block, but what a grand case for eminent domain: What’s 100 or so parking spaces versus the public’s glorious constitutionally guaranteed right to free assembly and free speech? Particularly these days, when both rights are being parsed and parceled, through idiocies such as “free speech zones” that are anything but? Anyway, London’s fabled Speakers’ Corner was once private property too. Having acquired a substantial parcel of land from the monks at Westminster Abbey in 1536, Henry VIII had it fenced off for his exclusive hunting pleasure. One hundred years later, Charles I opened that land to the public, and in 1872, an act of Parliament set aside a corner -- already in use for public gatherings and protests -- as a designated area for free public speaking in what had become Hyde Park. What has made London’s Speakers’ Corner successful is its pure simplicity: Anyone can speak on any subject. There are no fees, schedules or permits. One may earnestly hope to sway opinion on a current political issue, or simply pontificate on utter nonsense, such as the ascension of corgis to the royal throne. A speaker risks only silence, hecklers or the collapse of one’s speech into a lively debate. Additionally the nature of an established public forum forces the speaker to hone his skills, as he competes with other speechmakers for the attention of passersby. A speakers’ corner in Pittsburgh could consolidate various, far-flung locations currently being used for public discourse, such as those perennial favorites scattered throughout Oakland, Freedom Corner in the Lower Hill, busy Downtown intersections, the Federal Building and Market Square. Market Square is an especially poor substitute for a public gathering place, quartered as it is and intersected by heavy bus traffic. Over the years, the Hyde Park site has hosted Karl Marx, George Orwell and Marcus Garvey, among countless others. Imagine a day when politicians, protesters, visionaries and fools, as well as other noted public speakers (Michael Moore and Michael Savage) gravitate to Fourth and Grant -- the place to hear and be heard -- as a matter of course. Got nothing to say? This corner is also an ideal site for some much-needed public green space Downtown. The relatively low-rise buildings and the generous width of Grant Avenue ensure that this small plot receives plenty of sun. Wouldn’t Grant Street’s ongoing farmers’ market -- the one now being held under the dark, gloomy portico of the City-County Building -- be more inviting in a blooming parklet? Imagine sharing the park bench with your brown-bagging councilman while you convivially discuss that bad bit of traffic management in your district, or the idiocy that foamy-mouthed fool is spouting nearby. One can’t put a price on that sort of heady access to freedom -- even at $13 an hour. category:Planks_from_elsewhere category:Flow category:democracy